Avarice
by TheAwesomeGizmo
Summary: What would it be like to be all of a sudden, thrust into the world of Panem? How would you cope? This story tells the tale of a young boy that experiences this very same situation. Who will he meet, and will he survive? (All reviews, good or bad, are accepted)


**Authors Notice: **_**I haven't really wrote much fanfiction. So take from my writing what you like, hopefully you find it entertaining and not a waste of your time. But thank you for reading anyway. I see this a medium to improve my writing as a whole, so any and all reviews are welcome. I sometimes find my writing is like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it.**_

**Chapter One: Hunger**

Travelling is difficult at times. I mean, at one point in everyone's life, you feel the need to travel, to 'flee the nest'. Like so many of my elders, you're told the old cliché' to '_spread your wings' _or '_get a girl, you need to leave this city'. _I never really felt the need to travel to anywhere in particular. I thought it would be nice to go to certain places, like New York or Tokyo. But never any really strong existential pull, telling me that I _must _go there. I don't have any tourist bucket list. I'm quite happy with the city I was born in, which by the way happens to be a quaint little city, Liverpool, England. It's a strange place, Liverpool. Anyone from here will tell you, everyone is divided by a multitude of different things. Sport, postcode, occupation. But despite its cultural diversity, I've grown to love it. Being only 18 years old and still undecided on my own future, I'm still just going through the motions, probably going to go to an average University, get a 'good enough' degree and live an average life.

That all changed when I found the pin.

Let's get back to the morning it all started. Just an average cold morning in February. When my 'just above average' lifestyle became was twisted upside down and thrown down a steep cliff. I was walking to school, wearing my favourite long black overcoat with my Sixth Form uniform hidden below it, a pair of formal black pointed shoes and black jeans. I looked the picturesque image of a modern day student, with all the black making me look like your average depressed teenager. I had my headphones in, the familiar lyrics of 'Tyler the Creator' verbally destroying my eardrums with his satirical profanity. I had just stopped by the newsagents to pick up a pack of cigarettes and to further add to the 'depressed' look I had going on, one was currently lit in my right hand, the smoke rising in spherical patterns above my head. Looking down from my phone, I noticed a little gleam in the corner of my eye just off behind the shops that were situated close to my school. I looked around me, over my shoulder and the street was all but deserted apart from a lone dog walker. I changed my walking pace and walked towards the site of my peaked curiosity. I ventured just behind the row of shops that sat to my right. This was probably the place that got all the deliveries. Situated behind the newsagents was a small little ditch, like a crater. No bigger than a football, I walked towards it. Seeing nothing that seemed dangerous, I squatted down to get a closer look. It was a little gold pin, with what looked to be a small bird perched in the centre of it. It was rather beautiful, and what looked to be in mint condition.

"Is this…gold?" I reached down to pick it up. Stubbing my cigarette out on the floor, I exchanged it for the pin that sat in the centre of the small little crater. _I could swear that this crater is smouldering a little bit. _Wondering how this could have possible gotten here, and who discarded it, I felt a little bit of happiness. This could probably sell for a little in one of those 'Cash for Gold' stores that had propped up everywhere in town like fungus. Twirling it around between my finger and thumb, I noticed a strange gleam that it had to it. Like it had been polished every day for the last decade or so.

"Ow!" I yelped in pain as the needle at the back of the pin pricked the end of my forefinger. A little trickle of blood dripped from the site of the injury and onto the grass below me. I stuck my finger into my mouth and sucked on it to stop the pain and the blood flow. Being accident prone, I was used to hurting myself at least three or four times a day. _Wait a second…grass? _

I stood up in a moment of complete dizziness and looked quickly at my surroundings. I was stood on a field of grass with tall trees around me. I was not where I was squatting down 10 seconds beforehand. My mind whirled, panicking at the all too sudden change in environment. Closing my eyes shut, I struggled to keep my breathing steady. I could all of a sudden feel a sharp breeze against me, almost fighting to knock me down. I noticed suddenly the lack of noise from the cars that were in the street, and the smell of industry lacking in presence. Opening my eyes, I felt my heart drop that my surroundings had not changed. Around me stood massive trees, like something out of a David Attenborough documentary. It was as if I had all of a sudden been transported to a luscious green forest. _ I must be dreaming, there is no way something like this can happen. _In my moment of panic, I realized I still had my finger in my mouth, and when I drew it out I realized I had bitten it in panic and frustration. Wiping it along my coat, I brought my hand back up to my face and stared at the gleaming pin again. It looked the same as before, still gleaming and looking freshly polished. I sat down quickly. My head was spinning and I felt sick. The trees around me looked malevolent. The world span around me too fast and my breathing picked up again. _It's not possible, I was walking to school…wasn't I? _I lay down on the floor and tried to slow down my heart rate. Putting my arm over my forehead, I tried to think my way through this strange turn of events.

"I'm Adam Hunter, I was born in Liverpool, and I'm 20 years old…" I began to speak to myself. However, I stopped halfway through my own sentence and stood up again in frustration. "What the fuck am I even doing?" I pulled out my earphones and it was at that point that I realized that they weren't playing any music anymore. Then a thought occurred to me. _Oh! My phone! _Reaching into my pocket, I dragged out my iPhone and clicked the top button on it. A little battery symbol came up, telling me that I needed to charge it. Sighing, I cursed in frustration and threw it onto the grass floor below me. A few seconds passed, with my chest rising violently as my sharp breaths raced through my lungs and out into the air around me. Tears threatened to escape at the corner of my eyes. _What's going on? I can't even ring anyone. _

I walked towards my phone, leaning down to pick it up I decided that nothing good would become of taking temper tantrums. Wiping my eyes and taking a deep breath I decided to take a better look at my surroundings.

Doing a full 360 degree turn, I couldn't see anything but tall trees, overflowing with green, luxurious leaves that covered half the vision of my environment. Growling in anger, I sighed. _I think I'll walk…that way? _I decided on a direction and began to walk. After a few minutes of walking, I slowly began to calm down. At least I wasn't in what seemed to be a dangerous environment. I hadn't seen any signs of life, but that also meant that no forest predators where lurking behind one of the trees I was clambering around. After 10 or more minutes of walking, my feet began to hurt. The formal shoes I had put on this morning where not really built for hiking, let's be fair. _As if this situation could get any worse _I thought to myself.

How wrong I was. After what seemed an eternity of walking, I reached what looked like a manmade structure in the distance. I picked up the slow pace I had gathered. Tired, hungry and overwhelmingly thirsty I hurried towards the steel-looking structure ahead of me. After a few minutes, the structure began to take shape. It was a metal fence, what looked about 10 or-so-foot high. The trees cleared the closer I got to it and I began to smell what I could only identify as coal in the distance. It was a smell I was vaguely familiar with, and it gave me a new spurt of hope coursing through my emotionally and physically worn out body.

"Yes!" I shouted. I looked around as my little exclamation seemed to echo of the silent trees behind me. I approached the metal fence and wondered whether it was electrically charged or not. I could hear what sounded like a low hum, like a little nest of bees or something. _Nah, this fence looks like it was built a 100 years ago. _I deducted that the fence wasn't dangerous and reached out a small tentative hand towards it.

Big mistake.

**Authors Notice: **_**I hope you didn't find this too boring. It will pick up eventually, I just don't like rushing straight into the action. I feel that a story becomes more entertaining the more pace it gathers as you go on. I hope it wasn't too hard to read, I wrote this quite fast and it's probably littered with grammatical errors. But hey ho, that's what reviews are for. **_

The Awesome Gizmo.


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